Archives For August 2014

Figures from the European Union show that while many German professionals are able to find work abroad with their well-recognized qualifications, Germany doesn’t always extend the same courtesy to foreigners.

From 2003 to the end of 2013, Germany topped the list of countries whose professionals have sought to relocate and be accredited in other European countries, with 45,175 licensed professionals trying to establish themselves around Europe, mainly in Switzerland and Austria.

Germans also enjoyed the one of the highest rates of recognition around Europe, with 89 percent of professionals like doctors, nurses, teachers and architects being accredited outside Germany.

After two failed attempts, Berlin is trying again to sell the sprawling estate and villa once known as Joseph Goebbels’ illicit love nest, but so far, nobody’s buying.

The address of the former villa of Hitler’s propaganda minister is as misleading as it is revealing.

Number One, Friendship Place, northeast of Berlin, is thought to have been where Joseph Goebbels produced some of his most virulent speeches against Jews. But it’s also where Goebbels wooed the starlets of the Berlin’s Babelsberg film studios.

Germany’s new-found determination under the third Merkel government to take its place on the world stage may be standing on shaky foundations.

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier reaffirmed his commitment to increasing Germany’s role in the world’s conflict zones at the annual conference of German ambassadors in Berlin on Monday.

“We need the courage and willingness to intervene,” said Steinmeier amid national debate on whether Germany should send weapons to Kurdish forces resisting the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) in northern Iraq.

A senior couple walk down Delmenhorst’s main pedestrian promenade, amid a string of vacant storefronts.

Home to two-thirds of Germany’s population, many of its small cities and towns are struggling to revive their declining centres. The Local’s Tomas Urbina reports from Delmenhorst in Lower Saxony, as it tries to dig its way out of the economic doldrums.

It’s 2 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon and the downtown promenades in Delmenhorst, built for the bustle of pedestrian city life, are mostly deserted. A trail of signs in empty glass storefronts leads visitors through the main drag, calling out in muted desperation: “To Let.”

It wasn’t always like this, says 65-year-old Ewald Bieler, a civil engineer who retired last year after a career working for this northwestern Germany municipality with some 74,000 inhabitants.

Ingeborg Koske, 86, and Christa Kaes, 83 in the elevator at Hansa-Ufer 5 in Berlin, August 2014.

Some came with canes, some with walkers, but they all came ready for a fight.

On Monday afternoon, elderly residents of the apartment block at Hansa-Ufer 5 gathered for a tenants meeting in the modest common room on the ground floor of the building on the banks of the Spree River.

In Berlin, it’s a familiar story. The rent spikes and those who can’t afford it are forced to move out.

In this case, the landlord — Swedish property giant Akelius — wants to renovate the building and surrounding property and wanted to charge 40-65 percent more rent. But this group of old folks wasn’t about to go quietly.